Crying foul: MQM senses shift in policy after recent arrests

At least 33 of their workers have been detained in the last two days, claim party leaders

KARACHI: Irked by the recent arrests of its workers, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) claims it has reason to believe there is a 'change in policy' about the party. They chose not to name, however, whose policy they were referring to.

As many as 33 workers of the party were picked up in the last two days, most of them by the Rangers, without explaining the reason behind their arrest, claimed MQM's Farooq Sattar at a press conference on Sunday.



"The total number of workers arrested in the month of November alone has crossed 77. On Sunday, a sector member of the party, identified as Asif Bhai, was taken into custody during a raid at our Liaquatabad office," he said.

The workers were either running the local bodies' election campaign or were at home when arrested, he asserted, adding that none of them had a criminal record. "As was seen earlier, it seems that planning is underway to snatch the [home] ground from MQM," he suspected, believing that the afterthought may have evolved after the results of the Hyderabad polls in which his party secured a 'historic victory.'

Sattar said that the party had braved conspiracies in the past months but then, after some meetings with the federal government representatives and the Sindh Rangers' director-general, it let go of the harsh memories and looked forward.

"We still stand with the forget and forgive policy and believe in starting a new chapter," he said, adding, however, that repeated incidents of targeting the party raised concerns. "This is being done at a time when the election campaign is at its peak."

Sattar said that the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had started raising speculations that the local bodies' polls in the city should be deferred due to the law and order concerns.

"Having seen their defeat in advance, they [JI and PTI] are now looking for an escape plan and this might be their strategy," he added. "The situation in the 2013 general elections was worse than it is now. Taliban were attacking the MQM, Awami National Party and Pakistan Peoples Party. Even then, the MQM made sacrifices and never demanded an adjournment," Sattar claimed.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 23^rd,  2015.